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Metabase

Metabase

Metabase is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows you to create and share data visualizations. You can connect Metabase to many data sources, including the MySQL server. Let’s explore how to set up the connection.

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have the following:

  • A working installation of Anyquery
  • Metabase running on Docker

Step 1: Set up the connection

First, launch the Anyquery server:

Terminal window
anyquery server

Because Metabase is a web-based tool, and anyquery binds locally, you probably host metabase on a remote server. You can use a tool like ngrok to create a secure tunnel to your local server.

Terminal window
ngrok tcp 8070

Copy the forwarding URL (e.g., tcp://0.tcp.ngrok.io:12345) and use it as the hostname in the next step.

Step 2: Connect Metabase

Go to the Metabase admin panel and add a new database connection:

  1. Open Metabase in your browser and go to the database settings. https://{your-metabase-url}/admin/databases/create
  2. Select MySQL as the database type.
  3. Fill in the following details:
    • Name: A memorable name for the connection.
    • Host: The forwarding URL from ngrok (e.g., 0.tcp.ngrok.io) or 127.0.0.1 if you are running Metabase locally.
    • Port: The port from ngrok (e.g., 12345) or 8070 if you are running Metabase locally.
    • Database name: main.
    • Username: Set root unless you have set an auth-file.
    • Password: Leave it empty unless you have set an auth-file.
  4. Click on the Save button to verify that the connection is successful.

Metabase Connection

Running your first visualization

Due to an unsolved bug in anyquery, you cannot use the Metabase GUI to select tables. You need to create a model in Metabase with a native query. To do so, click on the + New button on the top right and select Model, then Use a native query.

-- List my GitHub stars
SELECT * FROM github_my_stars;

Once you made your first query, you can create a new question and visualize the data. Click on the + New button on the top right and select Question. You can now select the model you created and start building your visualization.

For example, here is the breakdown of my GitHub stars per language:

Metabase Visualization

Conclusion

You have successfully connected Metabase to Anyquery. Now you can explore and visualize data from any source using Metabase.